Dieppe Raid II March 1990

RAMBLE No 21

14th, 15th, 16th March 1990


Dieppe Raid II – Another Epic Starring :-


Sandyballs, Kiri te Kanawa, Ryan

Lafayette, Jonah, Fraybentos, Ramrod, Swann

Felipe, Philby, Maria Callas, Berridge

Matt, Posing Pouch, Muscles, Purcell

Brian, B,T,. Grandpere, Thomas


This year the NERDS decided to go macho. The routmaster had told us our battle cry was “We’re Hunky; We’re Horny and we’re looking for action”. Every time we screamed this we felt bigger, better and even more full of bullshit. It was disappointing though that nobody actually took any notice of all this noise, but then the NERDS is normally a very subtle understated organization.

It may seem strange, nay even eccentric, that five middle-aged intellectuals should choose again to go abroad, spend all their money and end up feeling hung-over, knackered, starved of sleep and liver-damaged. What you must remember is that the disparate characters of each of us when welded together form a mighty, smooth running, efficient throbbing machine, ( I lie, of course) which feels that it can take on the world. However, we decided to start in a small way and choose Dieppe again.

We had two ambitions this time; 1) To make Felipe take part with us all the time, at least in body if not in spirit, and 2) to explore all those nooks and crannies of Normandy we had missed the first time because we had been unconscious.

And so, on the morning of the 14th of March, Aunty Vi packed us off with a cup of tea and a cheery word (something about having nice weather for it, I seem to recall). We pointed at Sandyballs, our soothsayer and gave him all the credit and then we clambered on board the “Prince Laurent” pausing only for the mandatory 20 minute photo stop on the gangplank.

On board B.T. did his famous imitation of a sadist and bought us all a drink with our own money. Meanwhile, we leered at all the schoolgirls who were walking around with clipboards and asking silly project questions like, “How big’s your dong sailor?” and “Please sir, do you really only have to be over 13 to have it?”,

Having wreaked our initial sexual lust on Tideway’s 3rd Form and fulfilled Sandyballs’ wish that we should de decorous in the virgin-raping department, some of us decided we fancied something a bit more mature and upmarket. And so Sandyballs went cruising and picked up a real goer in the form of Dumb Jean who plied him with cognac and did unspeakable things to his poor benumbed brain with her insidiously probing tongue. A shattered Sandyballs staggered back to his brother NERDS. He had had his whole life flash out of his mouth and pass before his eyes in one unguarded minute.

Meanwhile, having used up a lot of energy on the schoolgirls, the NERDS were ready for their scoff, so we sent Felipe out to seduce whoever was in charge of the kitchens. Fortunately it was our old friend Bruno, who assumed that we qualified as lorry drivers because of our pot bellies, smelly armpits and atrocious accents. He shoved us into the executive restaurant where we were given a huge repast for the price of a pint (well, a bottle of scotch, actually).

Shortly afterward we arrived in France. It was a shame that Mlle. Alexandre could not have been along to distract the representatives of officialdom because we were soon challenged by some short, snotty-nosed little frog in a leather jacket who turned out to be a douanier. We carefully revealed our true identities, however, and he fell cringing to the floor and pleaded with us not to report him to his superior officer. We disdainfully decided to let him off this time as we were guests in his country, but neglected to include him in the next lot of photos taken on the quay with us leaning against the Prince Laurent.

First stage was to prepare ourselves for the mini ramble and to keep hold of Felipe. The latter was achieved by wrapping cheese wire around his privates and giving a gentle tug whenever he looked like getting on heat. With difficulty we got him floozyless to the Tourist Hotel where some of us changed into rambling gear and some of us (in the IOs’ room) began wondering how we could manage to have a crap without the other one hearing.

Day one ramble began with a gentle stroll around the more picturesque parts of some of Dieppe’s streets and a steep climb up to the obligatory golf course where we paused and thought of Troy. Unfortunately the image was so unnerving that we quickly continued and headed into the interior where we kept coming across World War Two pillboxes and old mates of Reg who still remembered him for that single-handed attack on the Boche in 1942 just down the road. It was very sad because poor Reg wasn’t given any military honour for this exploit, in fact he was just given a stateless document and deported to Belgium.

It was very peaceful. The fields were green and full of cows. The NERDS were fresh and full of shit. We found ourselves once again irresistibly drawn towards POURVILLE SUR MER where last year some of us had been trashed at table football by the locals. The spirit of revenge lay festering in Sandyballs’ heart. He quickened his pace, forced us downhill past the oyster farm, then up the road and flung open the door of what he fondly thought was the scene of last year’s defeat. Erreur fatale! It was the watering hole of the local opposition who welcomed us with open arms, quickly divided our players and themselves into teams and were at it hammer and tongs before the more sensible amongst us had even begun to sip our drinks. Sandyballs’ luck was in. He and his co-partner, the Belgian bomber, managed to win one game before suffering s defeat worse than that of the UK in this years’ World Cup. Honour was satisfied with the single victory, however, and we turned around for home.

Halfway down the road, B.T. noticed that Lafayette had forgotten his beautiful walking stick, the one he had bought in a Pakistan hill station to wack dogs with on his field trips. Lafayette quickly scarpered back to the café where he found the said baton in the hands of one of the players who was beating some poor woman around the head with it. Lafayette gently intervened; “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur, mais vous faisiez un peu de harme à mon baton et je le neede pour le reste de mon ramble.” “Fous-mois le camp, imbécile!” was the reply. “Ne vois-tu pas que c’est ma femme que je châtie, elle a osé de me batter à babyfoot!” – “OK, monsieur” replied Lafayette, “mais je vous prie de ne pas laisser trop de sang sur mon baton parce que c’est special, un souvenir de le bon temps que j’ai eu among les wogs de Mirpur”. The representations were successful and the stick was politely returned by the cringing wife who begged Lafayette’s forgiveness and who staggered off smarting to cook her husband’s tea.

Lafayette was amazed at all this Gallic barbarity and quickly returned to his companions. They were feeling that the walk to POURVILLE and lacked a certain je ne sais quoi and had decided to liven it up a bit by returning along the beach at the base of the cliffs in a kamikaze attempt to beat the incoming tide. This return to Dieppe certainly set the adrenalin pumping. Would we make it before the hungry waters devoured our defenseless bodies? Could Felipe be cajoled into violent action? Would the minesweeper start shelling us? These and a few other questions occurred to us as we fell from rock pool into rock pool across what at times seemed like a white lunar landscape with a red terrestrial setting sun (poetic, huh?).

At last we were all safe and sound back at Dieppe. B.T. decided he hadn’t had sex for about 14 hours and proposed we contact the gangster’s moll and take her out for supper and after who knows? The rest of the NERDS were all starving hungry anyway and didn’t mind the idea of the presence of the odd pretty girl so we donned our dinner jackets and clawed our way up the 78 stairs to chez Valérie and got her to put on her evening dress and tiara.

We dined at the Phénix, a nice place full of rowdy DDS (Dieppe Drinking Society) members. Someone proposed a motion to try twinning our two organisations but it was overruled because of their obviously greater capacities. We ate a few steaks, sang a few songs, took a few photos and proceeded to the Cambridge bar for our digestifs.

Something must have been in the water we had drunk at the Phénix because the mood then became very strange. Matt began testing Lafayette’s religious beliefs and was disappointed when the latter said he had never felt any sense of guilt whatsoever about anything (C of E, you see). B.T. failing to have sex at the 15th hour too, sought solace in the pool table, and Lafayette very sneakily engineered a quarrel between the two NERDS prima donnas, Maria and Kiri. While these two were shaking their fists at each other and being in turns aggressive and sulky, Lafayette slipped away and took la belle Valérie back to her flat. Being a gentleman he spurned all offers of calvados and quick twang of her bra strap and went straight to the hotel for an early(ish) night. Valérie, who had caught a mention of Lafayette’s 4th nickname (see credits on page 1) sadly climbed her stairs burning with unrequited sexual passion and began to plan her next trip to Valenciénnes.


Later in bed, Lafayette lay dreaming of chances lost when the door was suddenly flung open by a ratarsed Sandyballs who threw himself on his (own) bed and obviously in some sort of psychedelic hallucinatory state began wrestling with a great white worm. No, he wasn’t having a wank, thank god, it was the cursed bolster which he couldn’t stand. Having subordinated his desire to beat Felipe’s head against the Cambridge bar he took out his frustration on his French pillow instead. The day ended with Kapok flying everywhere and with Lafayette cringing beneath his sheets fearing for his life.

Day 2 of the festivities is always the time when everyone falls out and whinges and whines their way along the route. This year was no exception. Sandyballs had preempted the traditions of this holy day of quarrels but we put this down to his Irish ancestry and to Felipe’s basic bad Walloon French. Anyway, things were patched up at breakfast where the prima donnas kissed, cuddled and vowed eternal friendship (retch, retch!) and Sandyballs resumed his masterful role of route master and got us on the road again.

We set off this time in the direction of PUYS (up all those bloody municipal steps again) and along the top of the cliffs. A minor tiff at the beginning about who should carry the rucksacks and who should carry Sandyballs ended in Sandyballs carrying his own rucksack and vowing to whinge all the time until we got bored and told him to fuck off. We decided to ignore this further example of bad sportsmanship and headed for the Eglise Maritime at the top of the cliff.

Lafayette was keenly interested to see if the NERDS had celebrated his rescue

from the Chartres with a naufragé plaque on the wall. Even something along the lines of: “A notre cher Lafayette, héros et matelot sublime, qui reaversa son verre de vin et qui fut un peu derange ce jour où le Chartres décida de se faire du tempête” would have done. No such luck. Only some French loony with a passably good voice was to be seen in the church singing her head off. Lafayette fled in panic.

So on we grumped towards PUYS. B.T. started nicking bits of bread from Sandyballs’ rucksack and got a sound tongue lashing for his selfishness. To bring a bit of calm to the proceedings B.T. and Lafayette graciously took over the rucksacks but just up the road we came to the Auberge Normande where we stopped and settled around a table outside in the midday sun to drink and watch the odd jogger go past. Ah, this is the life!

Just then Sandyballs took a large draught from his glass and, choking, spat it all over the floor in fury. Concerned, we rushed to his aid but found the problem was only that he had been served lemonade shandy instead of beer. The landlady was summoned forthwith and an explanation demanded. She tearfully said she had just come back from her hols and had had no time to stock up with beer. Besides which she had not been expecting such thirsty, handsome, well hung ramblers. Slightly mollified we accepted her apologies and reflected that this was the first establishment we had actually drunk dry of beer. As compensation Mrs Mariane promised us a free drink on our return and then washed our poor aching feet with Normandy cider, dried them with her long tresses and still apologizing, pointed out our path.

With renewed energy we strode up the hill towards the cliff top, faffed about waiting for Felipe who had lost his lens cap once again and made our way towards BELLEVILLE, an inaptly named housing complex where everyone seemed to have at least one overexcited dog. “They seem like a lot of woofters in this place”, quipped Felipe as he gently extracted his camera from the mouth of a playful Alsatian. B.T. was meanwhile moodily poking the eyes out of a cocker spaniel that had peed on his foot while the rest of us felt that lunch might be better achieved away from all this canine cacophony.

Sandyballs unerringly led us past the landfill site to our picnic spot which turned out to be a very pleasant sunny location on top of the cliff teetering on the edge of a 600 foot drop. We frolicked here for a couple of hours gorging ourselves and throwing orange peel at each other. One of us made a frothy offering in a disused saucepan to the local sea god hoping for a safe passage home. Sandyballs unkindly kicked the outpourings over the cliff in a fit of pique but the author didn’t mind, there was plenty more where that came from. Being model greenies we stuffed all our rubbish into the land fill site and headed back to chez Mariane for our free drink. There Felipe gave her his usual about how young and beautiful she looked, and did she like Spanish poetry etc, but the rest of us were getting cold and couldn’t be bothered to witness yet another pathetic seduction scene like last year so we bought some postcards, tugged Felipe’s cheese wire and carried on.

Near the deserted Hippocampe we sat on the seafront with Felipe on a long lead and watched him try to impress two of the local jailbait. Lafayette deviously let him write their names and addresses on his cigar packet and then tried to auction these to the other NERDS but they didn’t fancy being clapped in a French jail for dêtournement de mineurs and soon tired of this silly game.

And so on back towards Dieppe. We hadn’t quite got as far as BENERVAL as Sandyballs had planned but we reckoned we had gone far enough. We had even got slightly lost when Lafayette had usurped Sandyballs’ job as guide for a few minutes, but after a swift kicking and a few harsh words Lafayette was demoted to the rear of the pack and ordered never to try any more coups d’êtat.

We visited the auberge de la chanteuse de l’êglise where B.T. screwed up by throwing his beer all over the floor and using one of the local cats to wipe it up with. Then we descended to the harbor where some dickhead thought it would be appropriate to climb another 125 steps to con a glass of wine out of Hervê in his studio flat. Thanks Phil. Why do all your friends in France live so high up with their heads in the clouds?

Since Felipe had booked us into La Musadière for dinner, we decided to eat at Le Newhaven (English logic). This produced an attack of nerves in our organizer who felt that to break a reservation in this way would mean his being sent to the gallows or banished to some far outpost of the empire with the Foreign Legion. Almost paralysed with guilt Felipe escaped from us, turned up his collar, pulled down his hat and hammered past the Musardière. To our amusement he passed right in front of the very waiter he had been seeking to avoid who promptly went inside to phone Interpol. Nevertheless we dragged Felipe, who was now gibbering with fear, into the Newhaven where he promptly went to sleep, but only after having surrendered his credit card to us as a penance.

Pity that this was a quiet, refined restaurant as Sandyballs was in a mood for fun and feeling hunky and horny etc. The rest of us felt just plain knackered. Someone therefore turned a fire extinguisher on Sandyballs to shut him up and we enjoyed a pleasant meal without undue incident.

After dinner we played Hunt the Felipe around the streets for a bit until we assaulted the stairs and eardrums of sweet Valerie once again in our insatiable demands for Earl Grey Tea and sexual titillation.

Valerie wearily let us in yet again but said the French customs had just raided her flat and taken away all the Earl Grey Tea for close analysis. Most of us crashed out at this point since it was so late. Felipe dug himself a hole and pulled the floorboards over his head but was eventually carted off to the ferry terminal by B.T. and Matt who didn’t want a corpse on their hands. Sandyballs and Lafayette spent the rest of their time at Valerie’s talking rubbish about out-of-date pop groups and drinking weird substances. They finally staggered off after the others. By now Sandyballs was feeling honky, hairy and hung over, but sine he couldn’t even pronounce this condition he settled for being guided onto the boat and being put to bed.

In the morning we awoke in the bowels of the ship just as Dave Boy Jarman and Hamish McFindlay were fighting off the alien hordes above our heads. There were five hold-ups that day (all NERDS) who were carted off by Stuart to be given the rough edge of Doreen’s tongue. It was nice to see Glen Dudley who had obviously turned out on the quay especially to make sure we were properly manacled in the detention centre. Perhaps we should invite him on the next ramble abroad then maybe the tickets will be cheaper!

An so ended Dieppe Raid II. Sandyballs dished out the now coveted white badges which will surely become collectors items on The Antiques Roadshow in years to come, and the NERDS all vowed they’d give up drinking till the next time. “Why do we do it?” I hear you ask. Well, it could of course have something to do with feeling hunky, horny and ready for action – but somehow not many of us often feel like that. Once a year is certainly enough. Perhaps next time we’ll do a ramble to Cloud 9 instead and try to recapture our lost youth that way.

Pax vobiscum, nobiscum erat.

Lafayette